China Announces a Massive 20% Increase in Coal – by 2020

China has unveiled a crash plan to increase coal capacity and usage by 20% over the next 3 years.

China Doubles Down on Coal Despite Climate Pledge

Coal would still make up more than half of the country’s energy mix by 2020, according to latest plan.

BEIJING—China’s government said it would raise coal power capacity by as much as 20% by 2020, ensuring a continuing strong role for the commodity in the country’s energy sector despite a pledge to bring down pollution levels.

In a new five-year plan for electricity released Monday, the National Energy Administration said it would raise coal-fired power capacity from around 900 gigawatts last year to as high as 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. The roughly 200-gigawatt increase alone is more than the total power capacity of Canada.

By comparison, the agency said it would increase non-fossil fuel sources from about 12% to 15% of the country’s energy mix over the same period. Coal would still make up about 55% of the electricity mix by 2020, down from around two-thirds in recent years.

“This is indeed a disappointing target,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a campaigner at the environmental group Greenpeace. “Given that there is already severe overcapacity and demand for coal-fired power is going down, we would have expected a cap on coal power capacity much closer to the current capacity level.”

As WUWT previously reported, China may be planning to export coal generated electricity to Europe, via ultra high voltage power lines, to arbitrage permanent structural price differences between restrictive European Paris Agreement pledges, and the Chinese commitment to do whatever they want.

The only real threat to this audacious Chinese plan to milk the West, is the possibility President Trump will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement.

Whatever China’s intentions, you have to admire their hilarious sense of timing – the new Chinese coal plan was announced on the first day of the Marrakesh COP22 Climate Conference.

Getting a dictatorship to sign a treaty is not a problem. The problem is that the treaty does not mean anything.
However, in this case, COP21 does not oblige China morally or legally to do anything. You can not even shame them; you can only criticize them.

China could increase the coal capacity and it is in line with its commitment to the Paris agreement. If you read the Chinese commitment under Paris or the successor to the Kyoto Protocol is for its emission to peak in 2030 and it will try its best effort to peak earlier. To peak by 2030 means its right to increase as it likes. That is also the reason China is pushing for the developed countries like US to sign or “ratify” the Paris agreement.

There is no “despite” in what has been annouced. The confusion in the minds of WSJ is that they do not understand what “pollution” means , whereas the Chinese do. When they say they want to reduce pollution they mean POLLUTION like the filthy toxic air in Beijing , not CO2.
By building newer clearer coal plant and retiring a lot of older polluting ones they will be reducing pollution.
Britain wanted to do the same at Kingsnorth in Kent but the greeny idiots got the project shut down.

Walter Sobchak, I can criticize China because they criticized Trump for stating his opposition to the Paris Agreement. They have demanded that he agree to honor it. China is the biggest emitter of CO2, yet they are exempt from the agreement until 2030. And even then they only agreed not to increase their emissions after that date. They haven’t agreed to reduce them. But that doesn’t stop these hypocrites from demanding that the next President, who never signed on to the Paris Agreement, abide by it anyway. They would love for the U.S. to reduce its emissions so it won’t be able to compete with China while they burn fossil fuels to their heart’s content for the next decade and a half. I have news for them. The Senate has not ratified the Paris Agreement, so it is no more binding on the U.S. than it is on China.

eo,
I don’t think China ‘committed’ to an emission peak in 2030. What they ‘committed’ to was to increase their emissions at whatever pace they feel like until 2030 (while ‘making their best effort to peak earlier’, which is diplomatic speak for ‘we’re not going to do anything but talk’), then they promised to ‘look at’ or ‘consider’ reducing it thereafter, depending on their internal assessment of the effects on the Chinese economy. The former communist countries have always been masters at negotiating immediate concrete concessions from the West while promising to consider discussing making a corresponding concession at some time in the future.

China has made commitments which are totally inline with their economic and internal interests. The West has made lots of stupid engagements which are not at all in thier own interest but will help China.
That is why China is so keen for everyone else to stick to it.

Not just “dictatorships” – a treaty signed by ANY strong, sovereign nation is never worth the paper it is written on. Because if it suits, some time in the future, the treaty will blithely be torn up. International courts of justice are really powerless over a nation if the nation is strong enough. As always, the right is at the barrel of a gun. That is the real reason the Paris agreement between 190 sovereign nations is laughable and worthless.

On August 23, 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, clearing the way for Germany to invade Poland 8 days later. 2 days later England and France declared war on Germany, and WWII began.
Who would have guessed that 2 signatures on a piece of paper would eventually kill 60 million people.

Any one who thinks about it should realize that the US President presented a useless, faux agreement with China just to get the complicit media to deceive the US citizens into believing there is a valid agreement whereby China is cutting it’s CO 2 Emissions, and we should take draconian measures. With the current media in the tank, the average person hears about this great agreement, not aware that the Chinese are not cutting emission now nor anytime in the near future. As it turns out China is significantly increasing use of coal while we are shutting down similar plants. Meanwhile our economy will be destroyed with expensive, unreliable renewable energy sources.
It is somewhat like the “wonderful” agreement with Iran claiming they will not achieve a NUKE for many years, meanwhile illegally and secretly sending piles of cash to someone who will never agree to a real restriction to building a Missile program.
Without a complicit media, these agreements would be seen as a SHAM by everyone.

The Chinese have astutely pushed off the date by which they are supposed to peak their “carbon” emissions to 2030. By that time it will probably be a forgotten issue as it will be blatantly obvious that the alarmist BS just has not happened.
In the meantime the West will have crippled its own economy and will be dependant on China for just about everything.
Damned clever those Chinese.

“Greg November 8, 2016 at 1:04 am
By that time it will probably be a forgotten issue as it will be blatantly obvious that the alarmist BS just has not happened.”
Not sure how old you are but, ALL of the alarmist cooling/warming predictions have failed, for me, since I was aware of the “concern” in the 1960’s. We are supposed to be a frozen/boiling world by now. Seems fairly, errrm, normal to me.

To our generation, who seem to predominately be the demographic profile here, it is pretty obvious. To the younger generations who have been spoon-fed this crap since the kindergarten, they actually have been indoctrinated to believe it.

China’s smart.
They’re scarfing up the world’s coal supply, which they need for their Utra Super Critical Coal-Powered plants, which presently produce more energy per than a nuclear plant, and which produce 15% less emissions than called for as the 2020 limit by the abandoned Kyoto Protocol.
THEN. Because President-Know-It-All got China to agree to some stated renewable energy plan, China is now perfectly within its right to off the world’s access to rare earth magnets needed for wind turbines. That would be after we destroy our working infrastucture. Just wait. Watch it happen.
It takes 40 tons of ore to create the 2.5 kg of rare earth magnets for ONE WIND TURBINE. So do that calculation.
Anyone know the rare earth stats for solar panels?

Forgot to include the reason why “China is now perfectly within its right to off the world’s access to rare earth magnets needed for wind turbines.” For those who don’t know.
It’s because they own 95-97% of the global extraction, separation, and production vertical market and mines to produce rare earths. The US used to be in the vanguard. Bill Clinton, and his tream of top brains like his Chief of Staff (the former ballerina Rahm Emanuel), buried the industry in 1994 when they told Molycorps it could go under for all it cared, the government had no strategic or national interest in rare earths.
Hillary said that when she got in, she would create 500 billion new solar panels by what was it? 2020? Or 2025? With what?

…No No…This can’t be true…Griff said they were the ultimate in Carbon Reduction and Solar Energy production….They have promised to reduce their Carbon Footprint…In about 30 years…IF ..it is good for them……if not, they will just continue to build HUGE coal plants….D’oh !!

I’m sorry Greg, is there a new Internet rule that says you can’t talk about someone unless they’ve already posted in that thread? Griff has previously made (frankly ludicrous) posts on how ‘Green’ China is supposed to be. This article makes it clear just how little commitment China really has towards CO2 reductions. Which is what many of us were saying from the beginning. If Griff was smart I would expect him to not show his face in this thread, and wait for it to fall off the frontpage. But I wouldn’t be the least surprised if he shows up trying to spin this as some great victory for the Climate Faith. After all, this 5 year plan DOES show a decrease in coal power on a percentage of Chinese power standing. (And we all know how well communist keep to their 5 year plans) Belief often trumps reality in Climateland.
Meanwhile, I imagine we will keep talking about what others have said in the past, regardless of whether they happen to be here at the time to defend it. Especially since most of the High Priests of Climate don’t ever post here.

Actually Duncan installed capacity in Ontario is 36% nuclear, 24% hydro,, 28% gas/oil, 10% wind and 1% each for solar and biofuels, but delivered MWh numbers in 2015 were 60% nuclear (they keep churning away 24/7 just as they were designed to do), 24% hydro, 10% gas/oil and a paltry 6% for the greenies. So yes, they say we haven’t done enough but our retail electricity prices have basically doubled because they buy green power at 18¢/KWh and sell it to us at between 18¢ and 25¢ depending on where you live, etc. They are losing money, plus losing all the transmission costs and line losses. That is your basic green business model.
And on a weekend when the wind is blowing, everything else is shut down except the nukes, which you can’t just turn on and off, so the wind power they buy for 18¢ is resold usually to New York, for 3¢ or thereabouts.
see http://ieso-public.sharepoint.com/Pages/Power-Data/Supply.aspx
The actual capacity factors are also quite telling (delivered power as a percentage of theoretical maximum):
nuclear 81%, hydro 50%, gas/oil 18%, wind 26%, solar and biofuel both 10%. So we are paying to keep the fossil fuel plants idle for over 80 percent of the time, just so they can keep the lights on when the wind isn’t shining or the sun blowing. Another pillar of the green business plan (OK we save the fuel costs but not much else). Hydro could do much better if they didn’t have to keep Niagara Falls running for the tourists, but it’s always been that way, it’s not a green thing, plus the cost of an idle hydro plant is minimal anyway.
You may have noticed ads in the subway telling low-income households that they can apply for subsidies on their electricity bills. I wonder where that money will come from?
Basically, our electricity prices have approximately doubled, in return for switching 6 percent of our delivered power (12% of installed capacity) from fossil fuel to wind/solar/bio.. Not much of a bargain, but then suffering for our sins is also part of the green business plan IMHO. Obviously, an extra 10¢/KWh is the price we pay for feeling virtuous and saving the planet.
The poor folks who live in rural areas and were sold on using baseboard heaters to keep their houses from freezing, they are really suffering. It wasn’t that long ago that Ontario Hydro was encouraging electric heat because electric energy was abundant and cheap. Ah, nostalgia.
At least they aren’t planning to shut down our nukes. Yet.

@ Smart,
“You may have noticed ads in the subway telling low-income households that they can apply for subsidies on their electricity bills. I wonder where that money will come from?”
It is coming from the middle class that cannot apply for those subsidies and are paying these high rates and that to me is another way way of destroying the middle class the “liberal” way. I am in no way an economist or an accountant but it is the way I see it.

they buy green power at 18¢/KWh and sell it to us at between 18¢ and 25¢
=================
you forgot solar. the long tern FIT contracts require the Ontario Government to buy solar for 20 years at 55¢/KWh.

My mistake, it was even worse than I thought. From wikibible:
Ontario introduced a feed-in tariff in 2006, revised in 2009[52] and 2010, increasing from 42¢/kWh to 80.2¢/kWh for micro-scale (≤10 kW) grid-tied photovoltaic projects,[53][54] and decreasing to 64.2¢/kWh for applications received after 2 July 2010.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariff#Canada

@Smart Rock, Great post. Regarding the 50%, we might be comparing different numbers. As not all the “installed” capacity gets used at any one time, under most normal days when not all gas/wind/solar plants are running (which never happens anyways), normally around 50% of the base load it provided by Nuclear. I still feel my number is more accurate based on real life conditions not theoretical ‘available’ capacity. This is confirmed by OPG’s link below.http://www.opg.com/generating-power/nuclear/Pages/nuclear.aspx

Yes, but CO2 emissions are not necessarily linked in this case, as development of small Thorium-based reactors can solve the power-hungry needs of developing nations and yet be environmentally responsible!!!

Whatever problems there are with the PRC government, they do not have the global warming obsession of much of the West. The Party does seem to care more about their country and its welfare than do the greens of theirs.
This is more an example of how self-destructive the green blob is than how reasonable the Chinese are.

After refamiliarizing myself with a map of the world, there are a minimum of 4 countries between China and Germany. They are Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Poland. It would be really interesting to see the treaties that kind of infrastructure construction would require. It would also be interesting to see the quality of construction of that infrastructure.

China has a land border with Russia, so they could in theory route the power through Russia, in exchange for giving Russia a cut. Russia shares a border with a number of EU countries. Routing through the EU shouldn’t be an issue – these days the EU pretty much does whatever Germany tells them to do – they need access to German subsidies.

True but, it would be a somewhat shorter route to go through Kazakhstan, or so it appears on a flat map. They would still need to go through multiple countries, once they get through Russia, regardless of the route.

Europe is already dependent on Russia for some of its natural gas supplies. Didn’t that became a bit problematic for their foreign policy when Russia meddled in Ukraine and took the Crimea? Russia could shut off the valves for any reason any time although it wouldn’t do Russian bank accounts any good.
And now Europe is going to become at least partially dependent on China for electricity? I guess the idea of energy self-sufficiency isn’t on their list of priorities, or at least not high on the list anyway.
Restricting or banning GMO crops. Riding on the CAGW bandwagon. Shutting down nuke plants and blowing billions on wind and solar. And now this? Is their anything Europe gets right….I mean besides French and Italian cooking?

Didn’t that became a bit problematic for their foreign policy when Russia meddled in Ukraine and …

The meddling started when NATO, headed by US, decide to ferment an illegal coup by some very dubious factions who are now just as corrupt in power as those they replaced.
Russia acted , with limited success, to protect the ethnic russian population and preserve access to a strategically important warm water naval base.
Of course the complicit MSM kinda forgets that bit and tries to spin this as russian aggression.

Europe is already dependent on Russia for some of its natural gas supplies
======================
thus the Syrian War. The US decided to get rid of Assad because he stood in the way of a pipeline from Saudi Arabia & Gulf States to Europe. But rather than tell the US population the truth, Assad was demonized by the US government and a compliant press, in support of regime change. The end result ISIS and another country in ruins.

Didn’t that became a bit problematic for their foreign policy when Russia meddled in Ukraine and took the Crimea?

NO.
That is what President Know-It-All told you. You believed him. The truth is that the Ukrainian Constitution, written in 1992 after the fall of the USSR and written by Ukrainians not Russians, specifically states that Crimea has the legal and constitutional right to decide by referendum whether it wanted to remain with Ukraine or revert to Russian rulership (which it had for centuries before 1954 when Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine to please his Ukrainian mistress).
The first time that Crimea effected that referendum was in March 2014, three weeks after Yanukovich defected on Feb 22, 2014.
The Crimean referendum was a landslide to return to Russia, something like 90%.
Crimea notified Putin/the Duma that night. The Duma (Russian Parliament) stayed up all night and rendered a decision to accept the vote at 8 AM the following morning. By 10 AM, Putin put Russian troops in to protect Crimea, and Russian bases there.
Only Reuters and USA Today reported this constitutional right ‘the day of’. It was dropped from all subsequents news wire reports.
And President Know-It-All either lied to us about this, or didn’t know the facts on the ground.
Michael Crosston, Russian analyst: Page 30 of the journal report, first paragraph.https://www.academia.edu/12650079/NEMESIS_Keeping_Russia_an_Enemy_through_Cold_War_Pathologies_Сравнительная_Политика_МГИМО_Московский_Государственный_Институт_Международных_Отношений_Университет_МИД_России_Moscow_Russian_Federation_Vol._6_No._3_20_2015

The meddling in Ukraine was actually started by the EU as part of its empire expansion. They had been pouring money in to certain pro-EU groups for years. Then when the democratically elected president decided not to sign a treaty that would start them on the path to joining the EU, the groups that the EU funded rose up, cheered on by the likes of the BBC, Guardian etc, and removed him. So much for their proclaimed love of democracy as they then fawned over his successor. Then the war started which has seen around 9000 killed including innocent passengers in a jet that flew over an area where a transport plane was shot down just days earlier.

Who says it has to be newly constructed and/or dedicated? Just got to get it on the grid. Doesn’t have to go all the way to the actual constumer. Power source closer to the customer handles that. As long as there are interconnects, meters, available capacities, and agreements.

Simple enough to make work. The Chinese just need to sell the electricity to Russia. Then let Russia resell it on to Europe (for a respectable profit). Once the Russian are making money on it they will have an incentive to make sure it works smoothly, just like Russia’s Gas pipelines to Europe… at least until Russia needs to let the EU know who holds the leash again. <¿<

Three, Russia, Belarus and Poland. And the Russian electrical infrastructure is actually quite good. As is the Polish. Belarus would probably be the difficult bit, but they are more or less a Russian satellite state.

The infrastructure is under construction as we speak. Look up the CASA corridor and other similar groupings. Tajikistan where I was last week is building a power line to Pakistan south from Dushanbe. The Central Asian States are connecting power and gas services to be able to feed everyone as and when they need it.
As happened before, the Western end will be a quarrelsome bun fight: where will the pipelines and power lines pass? The whole Chechnya thing is about pipeline routes.

China continues to flaunt their disregard for the Paris Climate Treaty and Obama continues to tell us that they are a signatory. At first I thought they were just playing us like a fiddle but it’s obvious our own government is the one who’s playing us. China knows what they want and will not allow non binding promises to get in their way. It’s also obvious China doesn’t believe in AGW as anything other than a means to redistribute wealth and they are on the receiving end.

The Chinese are NOT disregarding the Paris AGREEMENT ( which is not a treaty ) , they are happily following the very permissive engagements they made in return for the West agreeing to economic suicide.
You really need to try reading what the Chinese agreed to before criticising them for “flaunting” it.
Of course they don’t believe in AGW but are more than willing to promote a foolhardy course of action by developed nations by joining an agreement which helps them clean up their air and improve their efficiency while developing their economy. Things they wanted to do anyway.

Wearing pedantic hat:
Flaunt – to show or make obvious something you are proud of in order to get admiration:
He’s got a lot of money but he doesn’t flaunt it.
Flavio was flaunting his tan in a pair of white trunks.
Perhaps you mean “flouting” – flout
Also found in: Thesaurus, Legal, Wikipedia.
flout (flout)
tr.v. flout·ed, flout·ing, flouts
1. To ignore or disregard (a rule or convention, for example) in an open or defiant way: flout a law; behavior that flouted convention. See Usage Note at flaunt.

Thank you, Dudley. This is one of those strange errors that persist regardless of the number of times we pedants correct it. It seems to be as old an error as the infer/imply error, and as intractable.
I really do not understand these errors. Getting it right is not difficult. It is just as easy to write “toe the line” as “*tow the line”, and “biased” only requires a couple more key strokes than “bias”.
I know that grammar, spelling, etc., are arbitrary systems, but so are the metric system and the Celsius temperature scale. We eschew carelessness and laziness in measurements, in engineering, in medicine. Why should we indulge them in our primary means of communication?

Greg commented: “…You really need to try reading what the Chinese agreed to before criticising them for “flaunting” it…..”
I did read it. They agreed to do nothing before 2035 and at that time they said they’ll make a decision. What did you read into it?

Since 2013 here on the west coast it has been hot as holy batman out here and this November we have been constantly at or above 60F here in Oregon which the average high is 50F.
Usually by now we have our first sub 50F high of the year and our first frost. Not even close!
This week is expected to be between 65 and 75F with the warmest being tomorrow.
This video explains where our storms are going and you have to turn off your *idiot* mode the government has spoon fed you.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EasBEzkaS7k&w=560&h=315%5D

OMG a khemtail knutter on about “white outs” and transmitters modifying the storm track. LOL.
Here is an interesting weather event that I witnessed on a recent flight into London. Very fine ice cloud ( diamond dust ) producing a specular reflection of the sun.https://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/cloud_reflection_strong_173.pnghttps://climategrog.wordpress.com/cloud_reflection_strong_173/
What was interesting is that when I looked up the radiosonde data for southern England at that time, it showed air temps below dew point and below ice “dew point” from 2km to 6km ( photo was taken from 18000ft : the top of the altitude range ). ie there were perfect conditions for persistent khemtrails right down to 600ft on the main flight paths into London.
One of the main loony tune claims is that it is physically impossible to get contrails naturally below 8km ( 24000ft). Data is shown below the photo in the above link.
There is a click-through series of similar images if anyone is interested in those reflections:https://climategrog.wordpress.com/cloud_reflection_round_170/

Who’s foolish enough to believe China, India, the US and all the other major emitters are going to let a non-biding treaty like the Paris deal stand in the way of economic opportunities? This is only the first of numerous moves on the part of most nations to do what’s ever convenient when it domes to power generation, and treaties be damned.

““This is indeed a disappointing target,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a campaigner at the environmental group Greenpeace. “Given that there is already severe overcapacity and demand for coal-fired power is going down, we would have expected a cap on coal power capacity much closer to the current capacity level.”
What makes this person think the demand for coal-fired powerplants is going down? Didn’t I just read where China and India and other countries have dozens of future coal-fired powerplants planned? Yes, I did.
Is this a case of wishful, delusional thinking on Lauri’s part?

give me the wind turbine free
===============
a hair shirt cannot bring you closer to salvation unless you truly suffer.
carbon taxes work to save the earth because the people paying the tax suffer. and it is this suffering that causes them to mend their evil ways. where is the suffering in free?
without suffering there can be no salvation and the earth will be doomed. as a result, all alive today will die over the next 100 years, unless carbon taxes are increased dramatically. in which case all alive today will die over the next 10 decades.

Our dear “Lurch” Kerry has already stated the western nations could stop ALL of their CO2 emissions and it would not be enough to keep the temperature from rising over 2 degrees due to the increase in emission from China and India.

“Our dear “Lurch” Kerry has already stated the western nations could stop ALL of their CO2 emissions and it would not be enough to keep the temperature from rising over 2 degrees ”
How much CO2 does it take to raise the temperature 2 degrees? I think there is an unwarranted assumption in here somewhere.

China’s Xi Jinping Tightens His Hold on Communist Party
China Defaults on 2014 agreement with the European Union. The EU’s wireless telecom equipment sector suffers from weak demand and ongoing Chinese protectionism.
How could anyone sign any agreement with the Chinese Government? Is there anyone out there, who really believes the Chinese commitment at Paris to start reducing emissions in 2030? Or, any trade agreement with them?

My local China expert points out that they have built hundreds of large empty cities for some purpose. link
There is a story about a scholar giving a toast at a banquet.

When I first came to China, I intended to gather enough material to write a book.
After a couple of years I thought I could muster a decent essay.
After a decade of living in China I’m not sure I can finish this toast.

Europe,is already dependent on Russia for gas supplies. Russia will eagerly partner with China for a cut of the profits of transporting electricity to Western Europe where the elites will have closed their reliable coal;-fired electricity plants and littered their landscapes with ‘decorative;’ wind-turbines, just for the symbolic effect .
China, whose native name is “Zhong Guo”, or Central State, sees itself a rightly returning to a place of pre-eminence over the barbarian Nations of the West and well able to guide much more than just their energy use.
As the Chinese Curse says, “May you live in interesting times.”

China hardly has any choice over the near short term period mentioned. They have been very active in removing the major causes of their air pollution – dirty coal power plants – by replacing them with clean coal plants, getting the clean coal from overseas, as their mines only contain dirty coal.
But, as usual, China has the power of technology and can produce in country , nuclear Gen 3 power plants (and even export them elsewhere as well). They are planning on building lots of nuclear, but this isn’t gping to happen in 3 years. I believe they currently are building around three or four dozen conventional reactors, each a bit over one gigawatt. BUT (big ass but) they are rushing headlong into the development of the radical molten salt reactor, a technology that can economically beat coal and any other power scheme, and those reactors can be built and deployed really, really FAST (in factories). I predict the economics of that non-carbon power will rapidly
prevail and make any predictions that do not recognize its significance nothing but exercizes in
irrelevance. I have become a one-note Johnny about the superiority of molten salt reactors,
which come in several variants, all of them good.

A clean coal power plant is any operating in the United States today.
There was a new 5000 MWe coal plant in China just down the road from the nuke plant I worked at in China before retiring. It was very clean.
I am old enough to know what a ‘dirty’ power plant looks like.
So SMC remind me of the coal plant that you have seen lately. Are you one of those California school children who has never seen one but passes on propaganda feed by stupid teachers who have also never seen one.

Retired Kit P,
No, I’m not from Kalifornia. I was in a coal fired plant last week? Maybe 2 weeks ago? It all kind of blurs together. I know for sure I’ll be in a coal fired plant next week, maybe 2 plants. Also, I know the difference between the chimney and the cooling tower…among other things. What do I do in these plants? I work on the radiation based density gauges used in the FGD systems. Also, the level systems associated with the anhydrous ammonia tanks or urea hydrolyzers for the SCR’s. As well as the level switches on the ESP’s… among other things.
The gist of my inquiry (even though I forgot the ?) was directed at arthur4563. Arthur said,”They have been very active in removing the major causes of their air pollution – dirty coal power plants – by replacing them with clean coal plants, getting the clean coal from overseas, as their mines only contain dirty coal.” I was especially interested in the part that said, “… clean coal from overseas, as their mines only contain dirty coal.”

SMC @ 8:56
There does seem to be some confusion over terms. I got here late and was going to comment on clean versus dirty coal.
Many years ago the coal truck drivers (Western Pennsylvania) would use a water hose to wet the coal before heading from the open pit to the tipple. One might wonder if the action was to provide “clean” coal, decrease dust, or increase weight.

Clean coal is coal with all that nasty, dirty black “carbon” washed out of it. It looks a lot like pure driven snow. LOL.
You should have made it clearer what the sense of your question was. Good to see there are such qualified commenters here.
@arthur: Since “clean coal” is a stupid term usually used by enviros to mean you have to waste about the third of the energy you get from burning it to capture the co2 and hide it somewhere, you really need to say what you mean by that term. I’m guessing that you are saying most chinese coal is lower quality brown coal not anthracite.

“I have become a one-note Johnny about the superiority of molten salt reactors,
which come in several variants, all of them good.”
They sound good to me, too. The next step is to get one up and running. Looks like China will beat us to it, but if it works as advertised, they won’t be the only ones producing them in the future.

I am so old! How old are you kit? I am so old that I remember when the greatest country in the world, the US, produced and used the same amount of coal as slave lab our China.
POTUS Clinton was attaching the coal industry in court because of global warming. The US lost about 50 miners a year compared to 5000 in China. Coal was no longer a significant source of air pollution in the US.
It would be easy to be impressed with the raw data for coal production in China. How nice that the Chinese leaders have figured out that not killing coal miners makes them more productive.
Just before retiring I met a women who had lived in some of the same places as we had been to in China. She told me that America was the greatest country in the world. Why? She owner own home in Las Vegas with an automatic garage door opener.
I thought about that. So does our son and his wife own a house in l
Las Vegas. Clearly burning lots of coal to make electricity affords some the opportunity to make choices about how they will live.

An award-winning Surrey company that described itself as a “world leader” in wind turbines has gone out of business.
A bankruptcy notice on the front door of Endurance Wind Power in the Campbell Heights industrial area on 24th Ave. near 192 St. confirms that the company’s operations are now being overseen by trustee Grant Thornton Ltd.
Endurance chief executive Brad Bardua said the company suffered after government subsidies to small-scale wind turbines dried up in Britain, the company’s prime market. The sharp decline in the British pound also didn’t help.

SMC, thanks for your reply. Clearly you can explain better than me why we do not see SOx and NOx plumes trailing down wind from coal plants.
Just for the record coal power plants were never a major problem. They are just easy targets. The first step in cleaning up the air in cities is getting rid of crude coal burning heating. The second step is transportation. Then factories.
If you are the mayor of some cesspool city, pointing a finger at some coal plant in the boondocks is just good politics. Of course making power more expensive sent a lot of good factory jobs to China.

“Retired Kit P November 7, 2016 at 9:54 pm
Of course making power more expensive sent a lot of good factory jobs to China.”
Is sending…exporting emissions, the true goal of emissions reductions. While a few get real rich. Ever wonder why there are so many “gated communities” being built?

They don’t believe the prophecy. The Chinese are pragmatic people. They will reject the green/clean propaganda and develop energy technology on its merits to purpose, not to enrich environmental lobbies, industry patrons, and political opportunists.

yeah, so what that China is going to buy a whole lot more coal from Australia, and then burn it to help feed and clothe their people. That’s what totalitarian governments do.
But even worse, the Iranian government is still developing small, deliverable plutonium nuclear weapons with the billions of dollars our ignorant, jackass, Islamic President gave them in exchange for them to stop building uranium nuclear weapons.
WW3 is going to come b/c the dumbass US electorate put the jackass Obama in 2012 for a 2nd term which he proceeded to corrupt the entire executive branch in order to put a criminal syndicate in his place to complete his destruction of Western Civilization which he detests b/c he can’t be Dictator For Life over.

I think we should put all our efforts into teaching English to Chinese. For free if necessary.
When they take over the planet (just by being rational and sensible) it will be a lot easier for us if they speak English rather than us having to learn Chinese.

A lot of Chinese are already learning English. The problem with Chinese is that it is a tonal language, and as a result, regional dialects might as well be separate languages.
It’s a lot like S. Africa with lots of tribal languages. Because of inter-tribal jealousies, they refuse to learn each other’s language, so English has become the de-facto second language for most of the country.

By burning coal China is generating cheap power — and cheap power is what the world needs to bring its poorest peoples out of poverty. Paeans to cheap power have adorned this site since its founding. Let us applaud that China is committed to cheap energy growth.
Of course they are still commie bastarrds and not to be trusted — but their energy policy seems much better than what we got in America.
Eugene WR Gallun

Well said… and in addition it should be remembered that with an official GDP of 7+% (unofficially 6 – 6.5%) the increase in coal is significantly below the growth in energy consumption that will power those rates of growth. So a 20% increase is actually, from a per capita or GDP standpoint, a 10% reduction.

“Let us applaud that China is committed to cheap energy growth.”
Should we also applaud them for no longer using mass starvation as a political tool? China has a long history of cheap slave labor coal.
There are many examples of Asian prosperity where cheap coal and slave labor is not a factor. Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan come to mind.
After 50 years the commie rat bastards figured out that free enterprise zones would would make money by rounding up the rural poor and putting them in high rises to work factories. This increased demand for coal until the slave labor system could not keep up. Buying coal from the Aussies and Yanks in Kentucky ans West Virginia had to be a shock.
God bless those commie rat bastards for getting with the times even if it was 50 years late. Just make sure your church does not get too big or commie rat bastards hear you profess Christianity.
Clean air, safe drinking water, and affordable power is not an engineering problem. Good government is good for people and the environment.

This seems an entirely predictable development. The US coal industry has been “gutted” and Mr. Peabody’s coal mines have all been sold to Soros for the anticipated pennies on the dollar. Now the divestiture is complete, no doubt those assets will be sold or operated at a tidy profit by others. President Obama’s “war on coal” served its purpose perfectly.
If that isn’t treason against US national interests, I can’t really imagine what would be.

“… sold to Soros …”
Have you given thought to the possibility that Soros sold the coal shares “short” and then when they tanked he covered the short position? Likely he has already made millions on this, and the rest (“sold or operated at a tidy profit “) is not of great interest to him.

The Chinese are absolutely ecstatic that Western countries are allowing the CAGW scam to destroy their manufacturing capacity by switching to expensive and uncompetitive alternative energies, and implementing draconian CO2 sequestration and pollution standards that have no merit.
These irrational policies make domestic production unprofitable and uncompetitive, which forces foreign manufactures to move their operations to China.
While Western countries waste limited resources on expensive wind and solar, China will eventually replace their coal-fired plants with Thorium reactors, which will cause a second tidal wave of foreign manufacturing to flood into China.
Leftists have destroyed Western economies and their destruction continues at an increasing pace.

This is disappointing – but it is not an increase on previous plans: China will need to cut about 150 gigawatts of coal-fired power from projects that are either approved for construction or already under construction to maintain the 1,100-gigawatt limit (and it is an absolute upper limit).
The above article omits to mention non-fossil power will increase 48 percent to about 770 gigawatts over the five-year period through 2020 as total capacity expands by 31 percent to 2,000 gigawatts. (China’s coal power generation capacity will grow as much as 19 percent over the next five years)http://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/power/china-issues-5-year-plan-to-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emission/55266217
“In the new plan, the government will restrict other greenhouse gas emissions and start a carbon trading market in the next five years to help meet the commitment to peaking carbon dioxide emission around 2030, according to the 13th Five-Year work plan for greenhouse gas emission control by the cabinet.
Total energy consumption will be kept within five billion tonnes of standard coal by the end of 2020, with more use of non-fossil fuels including hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and solar power, whose installed capacity would reach 340 million, 58 million, 200 million and 100 million kilowatts respectively, the cabinet decision said.
Total coal consumption will be kept at about 4.2 billion tonnes, while smoggy regions should aim for negative coal use growth after 2017.
The share of natural gas consumption in total energy consumption should be lifted to about 10 per cent by 2020, it said.”

Griff has no idea what China is doing. Now why would I say summat like that? I will tell you. I WAS in Africa in 2006, in a “western” hotel and I got chatting to a bunch of westerners, geologists mostly in fact, a subject I am keenly interested and studied in. And *ALL* Of them were there, for the Chinese, looking for resources. Anything!
Local Ethiopians, apart from the corrupt, “connected”, elites, would not receive any benefit from resource extraction.
You may ask for links, but it is difficult getting any “official” information from the corrupt Ethiopian govnt. What did you expect?

Add to this. Ethiopia is building the largest hydro power dammed system in Africa. Dwarfs Aswan. Now do some google maps (In my day we used paper maps) and look at the down-stream countries. Are they worried? You bet!

India and China alone plan to build 1617 new coal power plants by 2030. Indonesia intends building 47.
Between 50 and 86 new coal plants are planned for Turkey in the next few years.
Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.
New coal-fired plants have been proposed in
Germany, France, Italy, Slovakia, and the UK, Cambodia, Laos, Oman, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Morocco, Namibia, Senegal,
So .. DON’T PANIC, Griff..
There will be PLENTY of INCREASED CO2 emissions around the globe for many, many years to come.
PLENTY to keep the world’s food supply GROWING.
And guess what.. there is NOTHING the anti-CO2, anti-life, anti-progress AGW cultists can do about it. 🙂 🙂

Essentially ‘when your enemy/competitor is destroying himself just stand back and watch’ this green thing has been like that from the beginning. Asians and Africans beleive that the West has lost it’s collective mind. They are right.

In China, Coal is a Green Investment:http://www.scmp.com/business/money/investment-products/article/2018962/what-green-green-bond-investors-china-need-answer
Green bonds are becoming a hot topic in China after the country officially ratified the Paris climate accord ahead of the G20 Summit and a senior central bank official hailed China’s status as the world’s biggest green bond market in a recent speech.
In the first seven months of this year, China issued a total of 120 billion yuan in green bonds, which accounted for 10 per cent of the country’s total debts outstanding and over 40 per cent of total global issuance of green bonds in the same period, Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said in his speech.
To promote China’s green bond market, the government has introduced the China Interbank Bond Market for green bonds, which provides access for overseas sovereign funds and otherlong-term institutional investors. However, so far there has been little enthusiasm from overseas investors; most buyers of green bonds in China are still local banks.
“In think an important reason that overseas investors haven’t invested deeply in the [domestic green bond] market is that China’s definition of a green bond is a bit different from that in more developed markets,” said Beijia Ma, a strategist at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
“It means that something labelled green in China may not be green outside China.”
A notable feature of the Chinese guidelines, as compared to other markets, is that they permit the operators of clean coal facilities to issue green bonds, even though it is universally accepted that the funding of fossil fuel power generation does not qualify for green bond classification.”

Well coal is black green (Former green plants) after all. Someone at work recently was talking about coal, but no hint of “emissions” and “climate change” etc, but how “bad” it was, and I replied “Y’know coal is, effectively, concentrated sunlight aye?” To which he gave me a “Stunned” look. I then asked “Do you know what photosynthesis is?”. Answer “Yes”.
Then I said coal was laid down ~250mya from decaying PLANT matter. And I asked, what caused that plant matter to form and then, obviously, decay under compression over millions of years?
He could not connect the dots!

Space Studies Institute reported on a study done once that looked at the composition of a certain carbonaceous chondrite asteriod and found that it was made up of material that was very similar to Pennsylvania crude oil (a high-quality crude oil).
It seems there is more than one way to naturally produce oil.

MarkW November 8, 2016 at 9:31 am wrote: “A liquid asteroid? Sounds neat.”
I see you are in facetious mode.
“How do they keep the oil from evaporating into the vacuum of space?”
You tell me. You don’t deny the organic material is there, do you? It obviously hasn’t evaporated away.
Here’s a little additional information for anyone who cares:http://web.gps.caltech.edu/classes/ge133/reading/sephton.pdf
“The carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are fragments of asteroids that have remained relatively unprocessed since the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. These carbon-rich objects contain a variety of extraterrestrial organic molecules that constitute a record of chemical evolution prior to the origin of life. Compound classes include
aliphatic hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, amino acids, arboxylic acids, sulfonic acids, phosphonic acids, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, sugars, amines, amides, nitrogen heterocycles, sulfur heterocycles and a relatively abundant high molecular weight macromolecular material. Structural and stable isotopic characteristics suggest that a number of environments may have contributed to the organic inventory, including interstellar space, the solar nebula and the asteroidal meteorite parent body.”

The chinese have clearly realised that the only way to prevent the mass destruction of bats is to use coal.
From today’s Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/turn-off-wind-turbines-at-night-to-stop-killing-bats-say-scientists-dmbjqtgdl
Behind paywall.
“Thousands of bats are being killed by wind turbines but the carnage could be reduced by switching them off at night…………
Dr Fiona Mathews, who led the research, said that turning off turbines at night from April to October, particularly around sunset and dawn when bats were most active, could significantly reduce the death toll.”
Bats indeed.

Peak demand will continue to grow strongly in China, hence they must expand all their proper power stations, wind is poor at providing energy, but is lousy at providing peak demand on every cold day. Burning coal to provide electricity IS clean and green, because the resulting cheap electricity allows people to not burn coal at home for heat, one of the real causes of the bad air in China.

I wish someone here, that is much smarter than me,would ask the “Alarmists”, what temperature is it that you are seeking, and where on planet Earth should it be ?? If the Tropics cool down, then the North will get get unbearably cold…If the North heats up, then the Tropics will be unbearably hot, as per their models…soooo, what exactly do they want ? I was born in the semi far North of Canada, moved to the South of Florida and then returned to the North of Canada again in a 40 year span…The temperature differences were huge…and I am still alive with very little side affects..I think..?

which is why I keep making a point about China here…
The change in position in China over the last 3 years has been rapid and exceptional…
Just looking at the amount of renewable energy commissioned and changes in coal plant planning, including recent cancellation of 17GW of planned capacity, shows what’s going on.
This is a recent and rapid change which is worth keeping an eye on.
They mean it and are going to be asking the US a lot of hard questions about why it isn’t serious about what it promised.

Griff….
India and China alone plan to build 1617 new coal power plants by 2030. Indonesia intends building 47.
Between 50 and 86 new coal plants are planned for Turkey in the next few years.
Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.
New coal-fired plants have been proposed in
Germany, France, Italy, Slovakia, and the UK, Cambodia, Laos, Oman, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Morocco, Namibia, Senegal,
So .. DON’T PANIC, Griff..
There will be PLENTY of INCREASED CO2 emissions around the globe for many, many years to come.
PLENTY to keep the world’s food supply GROWING.
And guess what.. there is NOTHING the anti-CO2, anti-life, anti-progress AGW cultists can do about it. 🙂 🙂

Then there’s Germany that somehow maintains the facade of being green while they are really coal to the core (it helps that green NGO’s are brain dead).https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm , see real time German coal in action with this web site

Yes, never mind they are still compensating for shutting down nearly half their nukes overnight in 2011 and have 32% of electricity from non-hydro renewables (a figure higher than most EU countries)
Never mind they reformed their FIT regime, are building out new offshore wind.
Never mind they are waiting on their north/south HVDC connection to allow further wind power growth
Never mind they are on course for 2020 target for renewables and even for 2050 80% renewable electricity target.
They won’t scrap their coal power till they have a plan for replacing the lost jobs and they have entrenched unions slowing reduction in coal.
Germany is relentlessly heading for renewables and the coal is definitely going.

“the coal is definitely going.”
Ah, that must be why they’re buying up all the bits of the coal fired stations we scrap in the UK to build their new lignite burners!
Glad we’ve got that straightened out!

It is geography John… and the limits of the current grid.
Most of Germany’s wind power is produced in the north, most solar in the south.
a lot of the nukes they are shutting down are in the south too.
there is no north south grid connection sufficient to distribute the wind south/solar north at levels much beyond current capacity
The UK just finished an HVDC line out of Scotland to distribute more wind power and is well underway building a second, the Western connector.

Another explanation for the German energy odyssey is that there is no national plan, just a lot of special interests trying to their piece. That would explain early adopter, low efficiency solar rooftops at 10 times the current price of solar and offshore wind farms requiring grid investments after the fact and manufacturers adapting to keep costs down and traditional power companies getting around their problems.

As I have posted above, there are HUGE numbers of COAL-FIRED power stations being built and planned around the world.
There will continue to be a highly beneficial increase in emissions of CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 should continue to rise unhaltingly.
And there is nothing the anti-CO2, anti-progress, anti-LIFE, agw cultists can do about it

I hope people will be more upset about the increased health problems this will cause than the potential small impact on predictions for future global average temperatures. Pollution is shortening lives in China right now, much more so than any life shortening going on from a 1 degree rise in global average temperatures over the last 100 years. I feel like climatologists look at Chinese people in gas masks and rather than feeling any sense of urgency to help them they see money, money in the form of potential study grants and jobs and paid speaking engagements related to global warming. When they talk about how increased coal burning affects the predictions of their failed climate models it distracts from the real issue of people living in life shortening air right now.
I wish they would say “Look, forget the global warming implications, we can argue about that, but you can’t argue that this air in many Chinese cities is awful, people are losing years off their lives and living lower quality lives because of this. We need to help the Chinese find a way to stop this growth in coal burning, or spread it out so it is not so condensed in certain areas, to help these people”.
When they talk about global warming then the public thinks “Oh your models suck, this isn’t the problem you say it is” and the urgency to develop a plan to lower the pollution goes away. The problem is pollutants from coal burning is well defined, and telling chicks at the bar that you are studying health impacts of living in polluted air isn’t near as good a pickup line as telling them you are studying human induced climate change. And then there is the need to keep the climate change money train moving, keeping the impression there is urgent need for action and more studies. It seems like keeping their climate money train going is more important than trying to help the people in Chinese cities.

How many people died when London was covered in smog?
Cleaning up cities is what countries do as they grow richer.
On the other hand, the greens seem to be opposed to wealth in general. (With the singular exception of their personal bank accounts.)

Cleaning up smog: There’s a concept called “diminishing returns”. Suppose the country spent, say, $100 billion to reduce air pollution by 90%. Well and good. Then if the EPA, to justify its existence and acquire more power, proposed spending $1 trillion more to further reduce air pollution an additional 2%, would you just assume that’s worth it?
“How much is enough, Gordon?”

AndyG55,
I must answer you here at this late date (due to the forum format):
“Oh, I thought they wanted to reduce CO2. What actual real air pollution do they want t reduce?”
I assume you are not being facetious, and honestly do not know that CO2 was declared by the EPA to be a “dangerous pollutant”. Read that again. Arguably the most precious substance for life on the planet is a “dangerous pollutant”.

MarkW commented: “…Why do you feel errors shouldn’t be corrected?….”
To begin there was no error. But let’s explore word, grammar, and spelling police. When a post is understood what purpose does it serve other than to make the corrector feel better? Errors of fact should be called out if it’s pertinent to the discussion. Some of the most intellectual and important contributors to society are/were poor written communicators but it doesn’t change their message.

“The roughly 200-gigawatt increase alone is more than the total power capacity of Canada.” But Canada will seriously damage our own economy to reduce our CO2 emissions by 1 or 2%, which will have exactly 0 impact on global CO2 emissions and 0 impact on global temperatures.

Yep Jeff.. Those countries GULLIBLE enough to follow the anti-CO2 mantra, really need to wake up to the REALITY that their piddling little efforts with have absolutely ZERO effect on world CO2 emissions.
(and may actually increase those global emissions.)

History will record that the USA lost it’s position as the greatest world power in the first few decades of this century by gullibly following all the non science trotted out by alarmists. How sad! Can anyone please show me a valid statistical correlation between increasing CO2 and Temperature? Didn’t think so.

maybe what the coal industry lacks is skilled advertising?
if the output of a coal plant (water and CO2) was pumped directly into greenhouses to grow crops, would this count as carbon capture and storage? what if the greenhouse was as large as the earth’s atmosphere?
China Power: Turning coal into food.

China does not at the moment have much in the way of natural gas resources.(The geology is different then the US…which will require different fracking methods).
If I simplify US generating capacity.
We have approx 1,000 GW of capacity for 300 million people.
1/3 baseload, 1/3 intermediate load and 1/3 peakers.
Our peakers have been natural gas for some time.
With fracking some of the intermediate load has shifted from coal to natural gas.
Our baseload has been a combination of nuclear and coal.
If we assume China is going to need almost as much electricity per person as the US then they need 3,000 GW of capacity. 2,000 GW of that as intermediate load and peakers.
At this moment there isn’t a cost effective alternative to intermediate and peak load provision that doesn’t involve fossil fuels.

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